Happy Luau

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

How to Install "Finding Water" Icon in Blogger

This is in response to question in a comment on my blog from another member of the Finding Water Community. It's pretty easy just to paste a picture of an icon into the sidebar; the hard part is to link it, too, in Blogger. I have two ideas here, an easy way and a harder way (for those who know HTML).

If you don't know HTML, you can do things the easy way. Please test this to see if it works. I think it will, but since I don't have another Blogger account to test it with, I don't know for sure. In theory, it should work. It involves going to "Layout" on your dashboard, then picking "Add a Page Element" on the left. Next, pick "HTML/JavaScript" and click on "Add to Blog". Don't worry about using a title. Just get out of the "Compose" mode, go into the "Edit HTML" mode, and copy and paste the code below:

<a href=
"http://www2.blogger.com/%20http://artfulwater.blogspot.com/">
<img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5033442916917247250" alt=""
src=
"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_xOpK4d6Dw5o/RdphqiQO_RI/
AAAAAAAAAEw/up8IcQes0DM/s400/fw.jpg"
border="0" /></a>


Save the changes and view your blog to see if it took. Hopefully it did. If not, when you paste it into the HTML/Javascript screen, make sure that the long URL that is broken onto two lines above is all one line (i.e., keep RdphqiQ0_RI/ on the same line as AAAAAAAAAEw). I can't type it for you as it should appear because Blogger just truncates it and you can't read the code. As it is, printing out code is incredibly hard to do in Blogger because the code is interpreted instead of displayed, so I had to use special characters, which took me over an hour to fiddle around with and then figure out what to do! Thus, I REALLY hope this is helpful and not too confusing :)

The above method involves using my code and referencing my Blogger server space, which is a bit easier than uploading the image to your own Blogger server space.

To keep the image on your own Blogger server space, you need to do a trick that is a bit harder---kind of a work-around. I did this and I know it works, but it's harder. First, upload the Finding Water image as an individual post---just the image that's all. You will delete this post later. Now it's on your Blogger server space and you have a URL for it. Capture that URL and store it somewhere. Then follow the above steps to add HTML/Javascript using the above same code between the slash-stars, except replacing your URL for the image in between the double quotes where it says "src=". Lastly, go back and delete your post that is just the image. It's somewhat hard to put this into words, and you pretty much have to be comfortable with HTML. This will work, though---it's how I did it.

Hey if anyone knows a better way to do this, let me know. Here is where I went to figure out how to display HTML in Blogger. What a relief to finally figure it out!

7 comments:

Jessie said...

Thank you so much for doing this, happyluau!! I've created a link on the Finding Water site so that everyone can find this post. I appreciate you doing this! :)

Paula - Buenos Aires said...

Thanks! It worked. I forgot to change the mode of the "Add" box and it didn´t show at first but I read the instructions again and got it right. :)

Bette Norcross Wappner -- said...

Hi Olivia,
Thanks so much for your time and for posting this helpful information. I will try it.
Bette :)

Peter @ Enviroman said...

Hi Olivia,

Thank you for taking the time and trouble of commenting and expressing your appreciation in my post How to post special characters.

Peter a.k.a. enviroman
Enviroman Says

Olivia said...

Whew! I'm so glad and relieved this worked for you guys.

It was such a pistol putting those kooky special characters in all over the place. Even worse searching all over Blogger help trying to figure out how to do it, so Yes, Thanks, Peter, your posting saved the day.

Thanks for linking it on FW, Jessie, too :)

Bette Norcross Wappner -- said...

Hi again, Olivia....just a quick note to say, "I did it, I did it!" The second version of putting the icon into a post worked for me. Now I'm hooked on uploading icons! Such fun. Thanks! No need to reply. Just wanted to let you know :)

Olivia said...

Oh, that's ok, Creek Woman. I love replying to comments :) Because it means I'm getting comments---YEA! I do so love blog comments.

I wanted to thank you for asking how to do it in the first place in your comment. I learned so much from this exercise, and it ended up helping a lot of other FW participants, too.

So thank YOU, Creeke Woman!